'Less money equals more money'

The "could" in that sentence is doing more heavy lifting than Atlas.

Not shocked at all someone writing in the "finance" section of a newspaper has no idea how economics work in practice.

Woah, I just read Value, Price, and Profit. I got this one.

In case anyone still gets caught up on the old argument made against the raising of wages or the one more commonly made argument against having a minimum wage: Marx demonstrated that the value of a commodity is determined by labor time, not wages. Instead of raising prices, increases in wages simply cut into the capitalist's profits. The money that is paid to the worker in the form of a wage and the profits claimed by the capitalist are both derived from the value created by the worker's labor. So, when one increases, the other must decrease proportionally.

Value, Price and Profit - Marx

Citizen Weston is alive and well in the liberal establishment.

Remember, the belief that prices go up as a function of increased wages is not true. Supply and demand have little effect on anything in the long term. We literally just went through a prolonged period of inflation, it did occur after a moderate increase in wages, but it was extremely well established during that period that most of the price increases (about 55%) were driven by corporate profiteering, with the rest driven by actual price increases caused by war profiteering in Ukraine. None of it was due to demand squeezes driven by consumption. When wages went up corporations realized they could raise prices. That's it, that's how the system works.

When workers wages go up, they don't suddenly start buying insane levels of groceries. Like if my family eats a carton of eggs and two gallons of milk per week, having more money doesn't mean we suddenly consume twice as many eggs and twice as much dairy. There may be slight increases in consumption in these areas if people who couldn't afford enough nutritional food can suddenly afford enough. But the effect on the economy, if it causes minor temporary shortages, can be adjusted. Only under capitalist "recession" which is an over production of the means of production, does increasing production to meet human need create a problem.

Actually, the more direct cause of differences in wages is not consumer demand but level of unemployment. This is the real risk of increasing production to meet human need. Ultimately, it would require hiring enough workers to meet it! and then as the labor market becomes less competitive for the worker and more competitive for the employer, the new workers need to be paid more. We also recently saw this go into effect after covid. So many people died from covid that it shrunk the unemployed population in the US by 12%-15%. How did the Federal reserve respond? By raising interest rates, making it more expensive to borrow money, putting restrictions on new hiring. They literally said that this is why they were doing it, to drive down wages, in order to lower inflation. Stop hiring new workers, hire them for less money. Rather than do something about corporate profiteering.

And why is that? Not because it is good business, but because it maintains power between classes. Its actually good for business when workers make more money. Workers pay down debt, spend more on luxury goods, vacations, home ownership, all these objectively good benchmarks of a healthy economy improve. But employers have less control over the movement and activity of workers. I can easily find another job in my field for the same or better pay. As a class, the workers get more power, and the owners give up power. That's how capitalism works. What is good on one side is bad on the other.

We must be absolutely certain not just that raising wages does not increase prices, but specifically why this is the case.

Politico authors being shot out of a cannon could be good for them, the sudden release of DMT before death could result in a single moment of clarity in their lives.

"If they pay us half as much, then the price will go down by half"

This con has been going on for generations, and apparently they still are getting people to believe it. Just a few years ago I had a coworker who said he would not want a higher wage because of the increase in the cost of products.

“Could help bring down prices”

Ron Howard voiceover: “It did not.”

"Could" doing an absolutely incredible amount of unpaid labor in that headline

"wage stagnation is actually good" - capitalists keeping prices high and building bunkers on private islands.

You will own nothing and subscribe to everything. Cancel your employment at any time.

This is so dim, even from a capitalist perspective. Everyone in America is deeply in debt. Student loans, home mortgage, car purchase. EVERYONE is insanely in debt. Now if wages are not rising by the amount I have to pay is (due to interest) that's a lot of loans that are suddenly looking real shaky. And when investors are exposed to a massive AI bubble, that starts looking real bad for the global economy. The upside is a debt bubble popping would likely lead to deflation.

Im over here having an existential crisis about whether to downvote this then i realize the sub. Ahh yes slop indeed.

politico authors not even entertaining the idea that their food passes lots of hands to get to them

In ages past they used to print this horse shit on paper so we could at least use it as insulation or to make silly hats.

if a robot didn't write this, the human who did has brought great dishonor to themselves and their ancestors.

Even if we take this seriously as an idea, it's still gibberish. In this theory it doesn't matter if wages go up or down, because prices go up and down correspondingly. It doesn't matter if they go up fast or slow, or stay the same. The "sting" remains constant.